Abstract
Research examining teacher candidates’ preparation to teach in high-poverty, urban contexts marked by diversities and inequalities, throughout North America and internationally, is predominantly focused on examining and changing problematic attitudes based in white normativity and privilege. While this is extremely important, there has been a noted absence of research that supports translations of critical ideas from coursework into the practicum experience. In this article we share a case-study of eight teacher candidates supported by a practicum team approach designed to support these translations into the inner-city teaching practicum. The study is designed and analyzed through decolonial, settler-colonial, critical, and Indigenous theories and philosophies. The authors found common deficit perspectives in the practicum site, but that a relational focus across university and school contexts supported the translation of critical ideas into practice. This study recommends a more explicit engagement with settler colonialism and white privilege within both the practicum and coursework.
Highlights
Our research is focused on matters of inequalities in inner-city educational contexts and how this might be understood and addressed within programs of Initial Teacher Education (ITE)
There are a few major findings that emerge from the narratives in this study regarding the University experience to meet the priorities of inner-city mentorship in ITE: 1) Explicit attention should be given within courses to meeting the needs of children in differing contexts—emphasizing the particular needs in learning contexts that are under undue socio-economic pressures and processes of racialization—as well as the emotional toll of teaching in these contexts, and the significance of white privilege
We believe that there should be attention by ITE Programs to partner with community members as teachers within University programming to break down pre-conceived notions of deficit, and connect with the expertise that could inform promising and generative practices
Summary
Our research is focused on matters of inequalities in inner-city educational contexts and how this might be understood and addressed within programs of Initial Teacher Education (ITE). We consider the ways people with different roles and backgrounds participate in public educational spaces in particular places, and the mentorship of TCs. Our theoretical lens for design and interpretation of the circles recognizes the immersion of the circles in inequalities that are sourced to ongoing colonial encounters which are largely invisible to privileged positionalities (Grosfoguel, 2007; Mignolo, 2012), and a settler colonial context in the North End of Winnipeg that constructs exclusionary and divided realties based on perceptions of Indigeneity and processes of racialization (Donald, 2012; Hugill & Toews, 2017; Mackey, 2002; Thobani, 2007; Toews, 2018).
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